The Rescue by Joseph Conrad Read Free Book Online Page A

the master of the brig sitting with both his elbows on the table,
his face in his hands, had fallen unexpectedly into a meditation so
concentrated and so profound that he seemed neither to hear, see, nor
breathe. The sight of that man's complete absorption in thought was to
Carter almost more surprising than any other occurrence of that night.
Had his strange host vanished suddenly from before his eyes, it could
not have made him feel more uncomfortably alone in that cabin where
the pertinacious clock kept ticking off the useless minutes of the calm
before it would, with the same steady beat, begin to measure the aimless
disturbance of the storm.

III
*
    After waiting a moment, Carter went on deck. The sky, the sea, the
brig itself had disappeared in a darkness that had become impenetrable,
palpable, and stifling. An immense cloud had come up running over the
heavens, as if looking for the little craft, and now hung over it,
arrested. To the south there was a livid trembling gleam, faint and sad,
like a vanishing memory of destroyed starlight. To the north, as if
to prove the impossible, an incredibly blacker patch outlined on the
tremendous blackness of the sky the heart of the coming squall. The
glimmers in the water had gone out and the invisible sea all around lay
mute and still as if it had died suddenly of fright.
    Carter could see nothing. He felt about him people moving; he heard
them in the darkness whispering faintly as if they had been exchanging
secrets important or infamous. The night effaced even words, and its
mystery had captured everything and every sound—had left nothing free
but the unexpected that seemed to hover about one, ready to stretch out
its stealthy hand in a touch sudden, familiar, and appalling. Even the
careless disposition of the young ex-officer of an opium-clipper was
affected by the ominous aspect of the hour. What was this vessel?
What were those people? What would happen to-morrow? To the yacht? To
himself? He felt suddenly without any additional reason but the darkness
that it was a poor show, anyhow, a dashed poor show for all hands. The
irrational conviction made him falter for a second where he stood and he
gripped the slide of the companionway hard.
    Shaw's voice right close to his ear relieved and cleared his troubled
thoughts.
    "Oh! it's you, Mister. Come up at last," said the mate of the brig
slowly. "It appears we've got to give you a tow now. Of all the rum
incidents, this beats all. A boat sneaks up from nowhere and turns
out to be a long-expected friend! For you are one of them friends the
skipper was going to meet somewhere here. Ain't you now? Come! I know
more than you may think. Are we off to—you may just as well tell—off
to—h'm ha . . . you know?"
    "Yes. I know. Don't you?" articulated Carter, innocently.
    Shaw remained very quiet for a minute.
    "Where's my skipper?" he asked at last.
    "I left him down below in a kind of trance. Where's my boat?"
    "Your boat is hanging astern. And my opinion is that you are as uncivil
as I've proved you to be untruthful. Egzz-actly."
    Carter stumbled toward the taffrail and in the first step he made came
full against somebody who glided away. It seemed to him that such a
night brings men to a lower level. He thought that he might have been
knocked on the head by anybody strong enough to lift a crow-bar. He felt
strangely irritated. He said loudly, aiming his words at Shaw whom he
supposed somewhere near:
    "And my opinion is that you and your skipper will come to a sudden bad
end before—"
    "I thought you were in your boat. Have you changed your mind?" asked
Lingard in his deep voice close to Carter's elbow.
    Carter felt his way along the rail, till his hand found a line that
seemed, in the calm, to stream out of its own accord into the darkness.
He hailed his boat, and directly heard the wash of water against her
bows as she was hauled quickly under the counter. Then he loomed up
shapeless on the rail, and the next moment